“Tests in Taiwanese pork showed the presence of salbutamol sulphate, an additive specialists describe as 2,000 times as toxic as ractopamine. The product stays inside the animals for a long time and at high levels, according to toxicologists.”

I posted this quote from a Taipei Times article on Facebook yesterday.

My purpose here is not to discuss whether Taiwan should ban products with ractopamine residue in them but just to highlight how the usual irrational,1 borderline xenophobic tub-thumping has displaced informed debate.

As I caustically commented when I posted the quote on Facebook: I presume we shall see demonstrations calling for a ban to be slapped on domestic pork products. If not, why not?

Understand me: I shan’t be boycotting Taiwanese pork anytime soon. My point is simply the same as that made by a colleague the other day: We have been loading crap into animals for decades and obliviously stuffing our faces with the resulting produce. If it wasn’t for the protectionist concerns of some farmers, the public would have been clueless about ractopamine. As is being amply demonstrated by the revelations each day seems to bring, most of us still are in the dark about what we’re eating and will continue to be about anything but the odd product that some group has a vested interest in exposing.

In fact, it seems that many of the people I come across spouting off, with varying degrees of intelligence, on the issues involved have typically still failed to avail themselves of the facts. When I read people on Facebook and talk forums accusing the U.S. of palming off dangerous crap on Taiwan that they would not allow on the domestic market, it is clear they are not doing their homework.

Many countries actually allow many of these leanness-enhancers and the story about the Aussie and Kiwi beef samples testing positive for ractopamine and zilpaterol yesterday highlighted the murkiness of what we ever really know. Both countries ban the use of these drugs in cattle feed but it is erroneously being reported that Australia prohibits its use in all livestock. 2

What made me smile was the claim that the contamination might have been from Panamanian beef mixed in with the Aussie meat that was tested in Chiayi. The Taichung-based meat packer responsible kindly “offered to stop processing the rest of the beef from Panama” rather than being compelled to do so, which tells us that beef from Taiwan’s diplomatic ally is cushdie. Again – consistency people: I expect rabble-rousing at Burger King outlets islandwide, as the fast food chain imports this dangerous Panamanian beef.

When I think of the scaremongering over food in Taiwan, I can’t help but be struck by the following thoughts, among others:

1. I’ve eaten all kinds of things in my decade-plus in Taiwan. Chickens’ gonads; duck tongues; snake blood; festering, raw flying squirrel. Earlier this week – at the behest of my cousin-in-law – I scraped out a couple of spoonfuls of goose brain from the halved pieces of the head that came with the neck. My son Herbie had a spoonful. Offal, including cerebral matter and spinal cords, which are surely always the dodgiest parts in terms of chemical residues and possibly lingering disease, are part of the diet in Taiwan. The reports on the BSE furore a few years back made me chuckle, as legislators harped on about the U.S. offloading tainted offal. It’s offal for Pete’s sake. How about just not eating organs?

2. Some of favourite dining spots in Taiwan are dingy little holes which would be shut down in a flash in many Western countries due to sanitary concerns. Cigarettes dangle from the mouths of the proprietors in these establishments, ash crumbling off into my bowl of sesame noodles. My boiled egg is plopped on top with hands that, for hours, have been shovelling coins back and forth, and who knows what else, without so much as a quick rinse. (And this is just the minor day-to-day stuff. I have seen some jaw-dropping antics by staff and customers in eateries in Taiwan.)

3. During my time at a newspaper here, reports of contaminated pork (sometimes sold off from animals that had died of disease) seemed to turn up every other week. The indignation that followed these incidents was usually reserved for the local authorities or the guilty parties. Even then, the complaints came from handfuls of individuals who were directly concerned rather than whole swathes of the population.

My trade-markedly convoluted point is that ractopamine is just the latest bandwagon, that we are all exposed to equally suspect additives and practices all the time without thinking twice about it, and that it’s pretty damn funny to see farmers from Pingtung who were part of the oinking mob last week, now moaning about the procedures3 the government is now putting into place. As ever, it didn’t take long for idiotic cries of conspiracy to surface, either.

All I’m asking for is for people to calm down, and be rational and consistent about these matters. Let’s eschew the knee-jerk herd (sorry) mentality and unite in our demand for increased safety precautions for the good of everyone. BAN Taiwanese pork NOW.

Notes

I use irrational here to describe the public outcry rather than the hog farmers’ protests outside the Council of Agriculture last week, which – whatever they were – were clearly motivated by rational self-interest; so too the braying of the grandstanding politicians. ↩

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7 Comments

“The indignation that followed these incidents was usually reserved for the local authorities or the guilty parties. Even then, the complaints came from handfuls of individuals who were directly concerned rather than whole swathes of the population.”

Do you mean the beef-protesting pig farmers who had much to gain from imported meats entering the market being blocked in our Taiwan? Or are you on about the grandstanding politicians who brought American beef to our attention so they could get on the news and become known? The Taipei Times has also suggested that some of Taiwan’s pig farmers opted for salbutamol sulphate because even though it is more toxic — much more toxic — than ractopamine, it was simply cost effective.

blobOfNeurons

Posted March 16, 2012 at 4:23 PM

So this is how the Taiwanese stay so thin!

Anyway, salbutamol is only “more toxic” in the sense that ractopamine just isn’t very toxic. (Although it’s unclear if it’s “safe”.)

People in Ireland (got it off a friend there) noticed even if we did not in Taiwan.

Mind Power Mojo

Posted March 17, 2012 at 7:42 AM

And don’t eat the fish in Varanasi.

James

Posted March 17, 2012 at 6:25 PM

‘Do you mean the beef-protesting pig farmers who had much to gain from imported meats entering the market being blocked in our Taiwan? Or are you on about the grandstanding politicians who brought American beef to our attention so they could get on the news and become known?’

By ‘whole swathes of the population’ I mean just that. So no, not the farmers and grandstanders (both of whom I, in any case, mention elsewhere) but those who unquestioningly go along with or parrot their declamations.

My point about the handfuls of individuals directly concerned justifiedly directing their ire at the culprits and local authorities is that this supports my and, I think, your contention that mass demos and populist ranting about these kinds of things is informed in no small part by easily-stoked xenophobia (cf. my old cause celebre, the taekwondo idiocy which died a quiet death, the case at the CAS being dropped, and nary an apology for the deeply unpleasant vitriol directed at Koreans to be seen anywhere).

That this is the case is evident from the lack of a widespread protest against the Pingtung farmers. All over the Web Taiwanese bloggers and commenters have roundly condemned the move to allow this tainted U.S. beef, often peppering their remarks with misinformed claptrap like the claim that America is shipping off stuff that would be considered unfit for domestic consumption. Where the en masse outrage in light of the revelations about domestic pork?

‘much more toxic — than ractopamine, it was simply cost effective.’

Ha. As you know, that was the piece de resistance for me in that piece.

James

Posted March 17, 2012 at 6:30 PM

@ Mind Power Mojo: I’ve disabled the link to your Web site. I allowed the comment to go through as it appeared to be from someone I knew. But the site looked like nothing the person I had in mind might be associated with.

“The Taiwan Anti American Beef Alliance (TAABA) and the Consumers’ Foundation yesterday urged the government to implement emergency measures to deal with imported US beef and safeguard public health, following the first confirmed case of Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (mad cow disease) in the US since 2006.”